Course: Introduction to Political Science (POLS 1) · Silver Oak University (fictional sample) · Prof. Halloran
Module: Week 4 of 16 · Fall 2026 · in-person, two 75-minute sessions
Objectives covered: Objective 3 — compare the major political ideologies and normative theories evenhandedly, stating each position in its strongest form and distinguishing empirical from normative claims.

This file holds two pieces: (A) the Module 4 Overview page ("Start Here") and (B) the Welcome Announcement that drips out when the module opens. Week 4 runs Mon Sep 21, meeting Tue Sep 22 and Thu Sep 24, with end-of-week work due Sunday Sep 27, 11:59 p.m. Adjust the day-of-week and times to match your section.

(A) Module 4 Overview — Start Here

Welcome to Week 4: Political Theory & Philosophy

This is your home base for the week. Read it first, then work the checklist below from top to bottom. Everything you need is linked inside the module.

Weeks 2 and 3 gave you the state and the ideologies. This week we go one level deeper, into normative political theory itself — the discipline's oldest subfield, where thinkers argue about what political arrangements ought to look like. You'll meet justice, liberty, equality, and rights as precise concepts rather than vague applause words; you'll learn John Stuart Mill's harm principle — one of the most consequential single sentences in political philosophy — and you'll meet two thinkers who took the same question (what does a just society owe its members?) and built rival answers still argued over today: John Rawls and Robert Nozick.

The week's big question

"When personal liberty and collective equality pull in different directions, what should a just society do — and who gets to decide where one person's freedom ends and another's protection begins?"

By Friday you'll be able to state Mill's harm principle precisely (not the version chatbots usually garble), explain negative vs. positive liberty, describe Rawls's and Nozick's positions each in its strongest form, and take apart a normative argument into its claim, premises, and assumptions.

By the end of this week, you can…

Use this as a checklist. If you can do all four out loud, you're ready for the quiz.

• [ ] State Mill's harm principle exactly — what it permits, what it does not mention (it is about harm, not offense) — and apply it to a concrete case.
• [ ] Distinguish negative liberty from positive liberty (Berlin's terms) and explain equality of opportunity vs. equality of outcome.
• [ ] State Rawls's position (original position, veil of ignorance, two principles including the difference principle) and Nozick's position (entitlement theory, minimal state) — each in its strongest, most reasonable form.
• [ ] Analyze a normative argument — identify its claim, its premises, and the assumptions it needs to work — the same move you'll run on Mill's harm principle in this week's workshop.

What's due this week, and when

Work these in order — each one gets you ready for the next.

Heads-up on the AI tools: you'll use a chatbot to draft and explain, and then you judge its work against the record. Chatbots routinely garble Mill's harm principle (adding "offense" where the text says only "harm"), invent Mill "quotations," and mix up Rawls and Nozick's positions. Catching the model is the point — in the tutorial, the assignment, and the workshop.

Late policy reminder: 10% off per day late. If life happens, reach out before the deadline — I'd much rather hear from you early.

How to succeed this week

• Lead with the plain-language idea, then the philosopher's name. "Should the government stop you from doing something that only risks harming yourself?" is Mill's question in one breath — the harm principle is the technical name for an intuition you already have opinions about.
• Memorize one tiny hook. "Harm to others, not offense to others." Mill's principle is narrower than most people (and most chatbots) remember it.
• Read every quotation twice. Once for what it says, once for what it does not say. This week's classic trap is a chatbot quietly adding a word Mill never wrote.
• Treat the chatbot as a confident intern, not an oracle. It will hand you a "quote" from Mill that sounds right and isn't exact, or swap Rawls's and Nozick's positions. Your job this week is to catch it doing that.
• Expect fairness, practice fairness. This course never tells you whether Rawls or Nozick is right, or where liberty should yield to equality. You'll get the strongest case for each position, and you'll be asked to state the side you disagree with fairly before you argue. That's the discipline's standard, and it's this course's standard.

You don't need to have read any philosophy before this week — just a willingness to take an intuition you already have ("the government shouldn't be able to do that") and find out what precise argument is underneath it. Come to class ready to argue about where your own freedom should end. See you Tuesday.

(B) Welcome Announcement — Module 4

Release setting: post on the module's start day (offset = 0 days), i.e., Mon Sep 21, 2026 — not before. If your platform won't preserve the scheduled date on import, post this as a draft labeled "Release: Mon Sep 21."

Subject: Welcome to Week 4 — where should your freedom end? 🗽

Hi everyone, and welcome to Week 4!

Quick warm-up before we start: think of one law you actually agree with that stops you from doing something. A seatbelt law? A noise ordinance? A rule against driving drunk? Now ask: why is that one okay, when a law banning, say, an unpopular opinion would feel like an outrage? Political philosophers have been arguing about exactly that line for centuries, and this week you get the sharpest tool anyone has built for drawing it: John Stuart Mill's harm principle.

This week — Political Theory & Philosophy — we tackle the big question: When personal liberty and collective equality pull in different directions, what should a just society do? By Friday you'll know Mill's harm principle precisely (not the loosened version most people remember), you'll be able to explain negative vs. positive liberty, and you'll have met two of the most influential normative theorists of the 20th century — John Rawls (justice as fairness; the veil of ignorance) and Robert Nozick (entitlement theory; the minimal state) — each stated in the strongest form his own defenders would recognize.

Three things not to miss:
1. Lecture Tutorial 4 — work through the week's ideas with one approved chatbot (Gemini, Claude, or ChatGPT) and submit the share link. You'll catch the model's mistakes about Mill and Rawls, not just trust it. Due Sun Sep 27.
2. Political Analysis Workshop 4 (Mill's harm principle, contrasted with Rawls), Quiz 4, Discussion 4, and Assignment 4 also close Sun Sep 27 — the workshop is the heart of the course, so start early.
3. Open the Start Here page first — it lays out everything in order with due dates.

One promise, right up front: this is the most philosophically loaded week yet, and it will never tell you what to conclude. Rawls and Nozick each get stated in their strongest form, liberty-vs-equality arguments get both sides at full strength, and your grade never depends on which position you take — only on your evidence and reasoning.

Bring your curiosity (and one law you'd repeal, and one you'd add) to class on Tuesday.

See you soon,
Prof. Halloran